The invention relates to a method for manufacturing a semiconductor component contactable on both sides where a semiconductor layer series or sequence corresponding to the layer semiconductor component is grown onto a semiconductor substrate.
The invention is applicable in particular for semiconductor components designed as IMPATT diodes. Semiconductor components of this type are used in electrical engineering, particularly for the GHz range. The manufacture of double-drift IMPATT diodes is described in the publication of J. F. Luy et al., IEEE Trans. Electron Dev., Vol. ED-34, No. 5, 1987. The active silicon layers are grown epitaxially onto an n.sup.+ -doped silicon substrate.
A metallization layer is deposited onto the top semiconductor layer as a first contact layer. Then the underside of the n.sup.+ -doped silicon substrate is polished plane-parallel to 1 .mu.m and etched to a thickness of less than 10 .mu.m with a dilute solution of KOH. The thickness of the etched silicon substrate is determined on the basis of the etching time and by manual re-etching. A further metallization layer is deposited onto the thin n.sup.+ -doped substrate layer to form the second contact layer of the IMPATT diode. The impatt diode is structured with well known photosensitive resist and etching processes and positioned on a heat sink by bonding techniques.
A manufacturing process of this type has the drawback that the substrate surface has to be polished plane-parallel prior to etching of the substrate and that the reduced-thickness substrate has to be re-etched manually to achieve the required substrate thickness. In addition, further measuring processes are necessary to check whether the substrate does have the requisite thickness.